Created at the Graslin theatre, the opera “Les Sauvages: Tales from the Neighborhood” received unanimous homage from critics and spectators. The documentary “We are the savages” recounts the adventure of the creation of this show, more alive than ever by the presence of the children who fed and played it.
Once upon a time there were children from two districts of Nantes, Le Breil and Les Dervallières, who were asked to stage, sing and play an opera. On this basis, Adeline Moreau’s documentary could take the form of a sweet and, to be honest, agreed tale: they worked well and a lot, overcame many obstacles thanks to benevolent supervisors, and at the end reaped hearty applause and deserved.
However, “We are the savages” offers a much more subtle vision of the incredible journey of this group of kids embroiled in a large-scale artistic adventure. By blurring the boundaries between stage and neighborhood, between rehearsal and performance times, the film tells how a year of work and three shows in June 2021 in front of Nantes audiences gave these kids unsuspected self-confidence.
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Presented by Angers Nantes Opéra and the Compagnie Frasques during the 2021 season, “Les Sauvages: Tales from the Neighborhood” is a real creation, listed as such in the program, equipped with the necessary means and a quartet of talents: Guillaume Hazebrouck has composed the music, Guillaume Lavenant wrote the libretto, Guillaume Gatteau provided the staging and Guillaume Carreau designed the sets and costumes.
Each of the four Guillaumes fed his work with regular exchanges with the CM2 students of the Dervallières-Chézine school and those of the choir of the Rosa Parks college in Nantes, as well as their teachers.
We will not reveal here all the springs of the story which brings together two groups of children, that of the adults led by Pasquale who plays the bosses of the neighborhood, and that of the children around his sister Nino, who dreams of becoming a cosmonaut . Around them, family and police tensions form the reality of a daily life from which it is difficult to escape, but the arrival of a mysterious woman whom everyone nicknames “La Sauvage” will change everything: this character from nowhere, whom no one remembers having ever met but who seems to know everyone fascinates children.
Who is she, where is she from, why is she wanted by the police? We admire her because she is not afraid of anything or anyone. Then we’ll hide it, and it’ll disappear as suddenly as it came.
A tale is to tell a true story through the imagination and the marvellous: Adeline Moreau’s documentary shows all the work of children to appropriate this form where the impossible is allowed. If their neighborhood is so realistically represented on stage, why play out an implausible story? Not so easy to understand but quickly, everyone will be engulfed in the freedom offered by fiction to tell their life and their aspirations.
But it was not won, and we are impressed by the amount of work it took to bring the group to the level of artistic ambitions: if the four Guillaumes, the orchestra and the heart as well as all the professionals of Angers-Nantes Opéra are invariably patient, they are just as demanding. We will see under their direction the children rehearsing, learning to breathe together, to sing in tune together, to dance and move together.
“Les Sauvages: Tales from the Neighborhood” does not yield to any facility on the pretext that it features children: melodies and rhythm do not deliver themselves at first glance like a tune from a musical. And this text that we will have memorized, we will have to interpret it, in motion, with mastery and generosity under the direction of the director Guillaume Gatteau, a mixture of benevolence and rigor.
These moments of concentration and intense work captured by Adeline Moreau’s camera alternate with meetings with the professionals of the Opera as the creation progresses. The unveiling of the manufacturing secrets of the set, faithfully reproducing the model drawn up with Guillaume Carreau on the advice of the children, is a highlight: the concrete staircase that flanks a Dervallières tower is there, reconstituted on the Graslin stage. Just like the lawn a little yellowed by the summer, the small grove too, and in the background, the other towers.
Between the setting and the real neighborhood, the editing of the documentary offers a disturbing continuity mixing extracts of representation and scenes replayed in real environment.
Jubilation also at the time of the first fittings in the costume workshop: football shirts entirely designed, cut and sewn for their characters that girls and boys adopt indiscriminately. The children’s company will be colorful like the dreams they express in the film. Dreams that do not take them to the moon like those of Nino in the show, but dreams of success, emancipation and fulfillment, enough to put them in orbit all the same.
All entrust it, this quasi-professional experience gave them pride, made them “feel of attack”. This is indeed the heart of the true story that “We are the savages” tells: the power of artistic practice is immense, if we are willing to take our wildest dreams… seriously.
“We are the savages”, a documentary by Adeline Moreau (52′) a co-production France 3 Pays de la Loire – Heliox Films Broadcast Thursday April 28, 2022 at 10:30 p.m.
Followed by “Les Sauvages: Tales from the Neighborhood” (86′) An adaptation of the show recorded at the Graslin Theater in Nantes in June 2021 by Anaïs Spiro Production Héliox films, with the participation of France Télévisions
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